Monday, 21 December 2009

CAIRO, (PIC)-- Egyptian human rights activist, Hafeth Abu Sa'dah criticised Cairo's intention to build a wall of steel on its border with the Gaza Strip saying that such a step contradicts with Egypt's duty towards the Palestinian people and called for working to end the siege on Gaza and provide safe passage for people and goods.

Abu Sa'dah who is the Secretary General of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights said that his organisation was not sure if the Egyptian government was going ahead with the wall as it did not deny or confirm the news reports on the matter and that his organisation was waiting for an official position on the matter.

"I do not believe the we, Egyptians, need such a wall with Gaza.. we rather need to work for an end to the siege on Gaza, not participate in it.. I am appalled at this level of thinking," he said in a statement on Thursday.

He also criticised an editorial in the Egyptian al-Jomhoreyyah newspaper, in which the Chief Editor of the paper wrote an article in which he made contrast between resistance and sovereignty, saying that the comparison was wrong as Palestinians never constituted a threat to Egyptian sovereignty, to the contrary they constitute the first line of defence to this sovereignty.

It has been said that Westerners contributed somehow to the education of the nations which they conquered in Asia and Africa in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (This includes Israel, which really is an enclave of Western colonialism.) It has been claimed that the Colonial Powers--Britain, France, Israel, and other Western countries--actually benefitted the countries that they ruled.

Is this true, or simply an excuse for brutal and oppressive imperialism that continues to cause misery for millions in these countries today?

Egypt is one of the nations that lost a great deal economically and in human lives because of Israel. How has Israel contributed to educating the Egyptians? What have the Egyptians learned from the Israeli occupation?It seems a great deal.

The latest contribution by Israel to Egyptian knowledge is demolition tactics. Egypt has been well known over the centuries as a country that builds famous works like the Pyramids, but it seems this is no longer the case. The new era of demolition is here, and the first victim in Egypt is a new hospital built for deprived and extremely poor Egyptians who can’t afford the price of medication. The hospital mentioned is being demolished because it was built by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The state claims that the reason behind demolishing a hospital that has already cost $7..3 million to build is that the structure violates building regulations.

Egypt has never punished any of the murderers and the fat cats who erected buildings with cheap materials and collapsed, killing hundreds, during the last earthquakes. Yet now the Egyptian Government argues a hospital for poor people doesn't pass its byzantine building code because the height of its walls is more than allowed and the building is larger than the area permitted.

It is quite obvious that no rational government would choose to send $7.3 million of charity money down the drain, except for political reasons. The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest opposition group in Egypt and won five seats in parliament in elections of 2005. But since the group is officially banned, its candidates run as independents and its members are routinely arrested.

The hospital was built with 250 beds for the poorest people in Egypt. The Cairo governate's "construction" (destruction) workers started the demolition procedure using machines and pneumatic crackers to break down the walls of the Islamic charity hospital a week ago. Dr Medhat Assem, Chairman of the Islamic Medical Association, said at a press conference last Wednesday that the hospital was established on a land donated by President Hosni Mubarak himself more than 10 years ago.

More importantly, Assem claimed that the hospital had authorizations by the district authorities of Nasr City to build three floors and a basement on the entire land area, and that the legal dispute with the Cairo governorate began when the Governing Council requested the expansion of the construction on the rest of the land.

It was further revealed by Mr Assem that the Islamic Medical Centre received judgments against the judicial district of Nasr City in 2001 and 2004 recognizing its entitlement to expand construction over the entire land area. So, the hospital is legally entitled to build, and there was no legal reason for the Cairo governate to demolish the building.

But demolition of buildings is not the only lesson Egypt has learned from Israel! Israel is well known for erecting high apartheid walls to make the life of Palestinians a total misery. Egypt is practicing this as well, but instead of high walls, it is building a wall of steel UNDERGROUND. This wall will be manufactured in the United States, and will be fitted like a jigsaw underground to block the only way Palestinians can have access to food and building materials.

Urgently needed consumer goods have been smuggled through underground tunnels for years to the Gaza Strip. Buildings and infrastructure (including the electricity and water systems) in the Strip were totally destroyed after the Israeli operation ‘ Cast Lead’ a year ago, but the population of 1.5 million of Gaza had been surviving on food and medicine brought through the tunnels far longer than that, ever since the siege of Gaza by sea, land and sky began its stranglehold four years ago..

It is a bread-proof wall. BBC has reported that the super strength steel bomb proof wall will be10-11km (6-7 miles) long and will extend 18 metres underground. It will be built from strong steel and most important of all American army engineers are involved, showing how heavily involved America is in the imprisonment and starvation of Gaza's people

Can anyone see a pattern here? The US is involved in building a wall that is bread proof between Egypt and Palestine. And the US is the biggest funding provider for the Israeli apartheid state which has built the apartheid wall around Bethlehem, imprisoning millions of Palestinians behind the wall, restricting their movements and depriving them from their right to work on their farms. What else the Egyptian learned from Israel?

Oh yes, Egyptians have learned to attack journalists like mad dogs, hindering the work of anyone who dares to show the rest of the world how human rights are crushed under the state boots. Editors were brought to court in 2008: Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the daily Al-Dustour; Wael al-Abrashy, former editor of the weekly Sawt Al-Umma; Adel Hammouda, editor of the weekly Al-Fajr; and Abdel Halim Kandil, former editor of the weekly Al-Karama, who was accused of spreading false information about Mubarak and his top aides. Hossam al-Wakeel, a reporter for Al-Dustour, was arrested in September while covering protests over the closing of a private school in Alexandria. In April, interpreter Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree was detained while working with James Buck, a U.S. photographer covering riots in the northern industrial city of Mahalla al-Kubra. Also, bloggers like Abdel Karim Suleiman have been detained. In 2007, he was sentenced to four years in prison for defaming Islam and Mubarak, and he has since suffered poor health at Borg Al-Arab Prison. The prosecution of Suleiman, also known as Karim Amer, is the first of its kind since he was the first Egyptian blogger to stand trial for his work.

Imprisoning and detaining journalists and bloggers is another lesson Egypt has learned from Israel... and the free education is still going on. What next?????

Crossing Syria to cheers and perhaps the long miles, pace and road system is getting to some drivers as one Twitter stated 'The quality of the driving seems to have massively deteriorated as we get closer to Gaza! Pretty hairy here.'

Now on road to Damascus. Locals lining streets to cheer. Silhouettes of hills looming in the darkness, stars bright in clear sky, + the lights of Damascus spread out below. Fantastic. Syria is with us! We are the REAL international community!

Great news - Israel's government ministers will no longer travel to the UK. They are calling it a boycott - we call it war criminal running scared. Shame the UK government is pleading for them to return, but hey you can't have everything.

The Israeli government has ordered its ministers not to visit Britain until a new law is introduced allowing them to enter the country without fear of arrest.

The boycott will intensify the diplomatic row that has broken out following the issuing of a warrant by a London court for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, for alleged war crimes.

After accusing the Swedish press of anti-semitism the truth has finally emerged. Israel has indeed been harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians. This is truly horrendous news, reported in the UK's Guardian newspaper this morning, following the airing of a TV documentary at the weekend. This is a public relations disaster for Israel and their future denials of atrocities are even less likely to be believed. Contrary to the original report in the Swedish press, no evidence has so far emerged showing that the Israelis deliberately killed Palestinians to harvest organs.

Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend.

The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called "antisemitic".

The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran's state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.

Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army.

The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.